boundaries are meant to be broken

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It was that morning when the eagle swooped into her courtyard to seize one of the newborn kittens. It was a black kitten, born 28 days ago—the day her husband had died. The kids in the neighbourhood told her she should call the kitten Blackie. But she wanted the kitten to grow up with a darker name. She named him Night (though she ended up calling him Nighty anyway).

So, yes, it was the morning Nighty was carried away by an eagle. She didn’t hear his desperate squeals as there was a storm roaring in her ears. In the passage between her drawing room and her kitchen, she was getting to know a kiss after 15 years. And kisses scream in your ears when they take so long to find you. And to think of what they do then—to your lips, your heart and other greedy places in your body.

So where were we? Yes…Nighty.

It was the day that Nighty, the kitten, was carried away by the eagle, and the noisy kids in the neighbourhood came running into her house to tell her that Nighty was kidnapped. At least they wanted to tell her that. But they forgot all about it when they saw what she was doing—and what was being done to her. They wished they hadn’t yelled her name like that when they rushed in.

Because.

Everything that was happening between the Man and her suddenly came to an end. Kissing. Biting. Moaning. Stroking. Sucking. So much of action was brought to an instant halt. The kids, of course, couldn’t catalogue any of that. They just saw a man and a woman who were up to something that they didn’t want anyone else to see.

Two minutes later, she rushed out of the door to look at the sky. She loved Nighty, and she wanted to cry. But her eyes could not find the necessary tears meant for goodbye. Because her heart was beating in its cage, and after so many years she had finally tasted a kiss on her lips—a bit of the cigarette he had been smoking when he had come in, and a bit of the lemonade she had offered him when he had got up to leave.

She stood in the verandah, looking up, terrified that the kids will tell everyone around, and tomorrow the kiss would grow larger than her house, her neighbourhood, her life, her husband’s death, and it would only settle down after it had swallowed up this precious, reckless afternoon. She was thinking about the looming scandal when He came and stood behind her. She didn’t turn back to look at him. She simply told him to leave. The kids were still in the compound and they were looking at Him and her as if they were the lead pair in a raunchy C-grade movie poster.

But, no, she was the good woman from the family movies, wasn’t she? So she told Him it was a mistake and He should have kept his distance and she should have kept her dignity, and many other things that seemed appropriate for a situation like this. He heard her quietly, and then told her to shut up and to grow up. She smirked at that. He was 22, and she was 35. (She couldn’t grow up any more, could she?)

And just like that, he left. For home. For his Play Station. For his late night bar of caramel chocolate stashed in the fridge. For 4 am martial arts workout. And for the rest of his training at the National Defence Academy.

She wondered who had taught him to kiss like that? To bite blood out of lips and make it sweet. To make a woman forget she was old enough to be his…well, old enough. She watched him walk away, and wondered what he will remember about her, a week, a month, a year from now? Would he think of her as a fantasy figure from his teenage years? Or will he remember her, while guarding some cold, conflicted terrain, as a warm afternoon that had ended too soon?

Suddenly, it didn’t matter.

So she went inside her house and latched the door. There was an unfinished kiss standing in a house that had never known a kiss before. In a marriage that had lasted over 10 years, she had been devoured often and she had enjoyed some of it. But she had never known a thorough, wet kiss. That night she did something she had never done before—she slept naked. And she slept peacefully. In her dreams, she saw the eagle lose its grip on Nighty and the kitten fall on a large, gentle mimosa tree. He was bleeding, but he was alive. And lying on a bed of shy leaves, he was looking up at a sunset sky full of birds released from cages.

The next morning she got an SMS on her phone. “Send me a pic of yours. No, not a nude one. Just smile into the camera.”

Sure, you are only meant to fully remember some dreams, not all. But what about the many dreams that you walk into every night? The way you squeeze yourself under the eyelids of those who know all your truths, of those who fear some of your secrets, of those who have never looked into your eyes. It is magical how you get to hopscotch your way through the shadows of so many fears and fantasies, scratching at heartbeats, scoring karma that will always go unpunished and unrewarded in daylight. And it is mysterious why you will never get to know the men and women that you become in other people’s dreams…and even more mysterious why you will be part of some dreams and not others. Between night and morning, in the absence of light and consciousness, there are these stories you shall start but won’t ever get to finish.

Now, what made you think you only get to live one damned life? Tonight, the unknown is where you are probably going to do everything that you always wanted to.

Today, she stands under an ancient oak tree to ask questions that many women before her have asked, when it was time for them to stop looking for answers. She wants to ask the tree what it feels like to stand so still and strong, despite carrying the weight of two hundred summers and winters. What does it feel like to watch a decaying wound on the trunk turn into a secret hollow that has held generations of restless snakes and their silken echoes? Does it hurt sometimes when birds build nests on the scars of its amputated branches? What are the words that the Earth has been whispering to its roots to keep it standing tall against time? And why is it that she could never whisper the same to her unborn child before he flowed like a red farewell song between her legs? For if she knew the answers, someday, she too would have had a son with a shadow mightier than the oak.

The leaves of that wise tree in your grandmother’s backyard, the one that ate up your shadow while you stole its mangoes. The eyes of the puppy that you wanted to bring home, the one who didn’t care you will never own a house as big as your heart. The sleeping pill that swallows your fears every night, and replaces them with forgotten dreams in your eyes. The lump in your throat that knows the exact weight of your tears, like your closest friend never will. The sheet of rain that runs down your body to deliver your scent to the earth you walk on. The scar on your skin that hides timidly, yet hopes a lover will come seek it. Stop and get to know all of these, every now and then. Because if some day, someone asks you who you really are, maybe this is where you should return to looking for answers.

I want a warm, sunny day to bring me a blue inland letter at my door. I want your name on it, because names are beautiful, little things that aren’t loved enough. Write me a recipe, will you? Not borrowed from books or the Internet, but something that has sprung out of your madness and instinct and unbearable hunger, or even better, handed over to you with the pride of a legacy. Let not the measurement of ingredients be in cupfuls or spoonfuls; instead, share with me their weight and lightness like you would a poem. Tell me more about the smells that found home in your hands, when you rinsed, picked, chopped, crushed, pounded and discarded. In the margins, write to me the verse of the song that you hummed while stirring the pot or while looking out of the window as you peeled garlic. Was it a crow or a sparrow or a pigeon that fluttered boldly over to the windowsill, hoping you would hold a morsel for its beak? I will be happier knowing that you have learned its language. That you stopped to look into the bird’s eyes when it looked into yours. I also hope you remembered someone lovingly while the flavours melded in the pot, and I hope it was someone who had once made your eyes burn just like those onions did. Gather all of it in your hands – the songs, the memories, the tears, the steam, the smells, the fire and the tired sheen of the cooking pot – and place it on a blue inland letter. Drop it in the postbox down the road that is mostly empty these days, much like what you and I have become. Send me a recipe, will you? I am waiting here, hungry to eat up a mundane moment from your life.